


waiting for that feeling to come

by saddestboner



Series: 76 Kisses Meme [2]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Depression, Don't copy to another site, DreamWidth Prompt, F/M, Gen, Non-Famous Family Members As Characters, Postpartum Depression, Small Victories, body image issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 12:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18691657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddestboner/pseuds/saddestboner
Summary: He can already see the cracks and fissures that have opened up since he’s been on his own.





	waiting for that feeling to come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tobalance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobalance/gifts).



> **Additional Notes/Warnings:** James's wife appears as a character. Mention of the McCann twins. Depression. Body image issues. Angst.
> 
> Written for the 76 kisses meme and _14\. Kiss on the neck, James/Jess_. This probably isn't what you were expecting, [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/tobalance/profile)[**tobalance**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/tobalance/)! Hope you like it anyway!!!!!
> 
> Soundtrack:  
> "[ **Tender**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_OK_H8F2g0)," Blur  
> "[ **A Better Son/Daughter**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sy7y54XAE)," Rilo Kiley  
> "[ **Count On Me**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1FQac3CqdQ)," Default  
> "[ **Dare You to Move**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qbnsk2_F5g)," Switchfoot
> 
> Title from "Tender," by Blur.

James spends Christmas with Jess and the twins in the intensive care unit at the hospital, and then it’s right back to his offseason workouts, strict training regimens, and preparation for the upcoming season. Then it’ll be time for TigerFest in Detroit and, eventually, off to Lakeland for Spring Training.

The thing is, James has never been this distracted before. All he can think about is Jess lying in a tiny bed in a tiny room, decorated with paper snowflakes, a paltry fake tree sitting on the windowsill. She can’t even hold onto their babies because they spend most of the time in intensive care, growing and getting stronger, until the day James and Jess can finally take them home. 

It’s a necessary evil, they both understand that, but that doesn’t make it easier to deal with. And James knows Jess is having a hard time coping. At least she has a fleet of nurses to take care of her when James can’t be by her bedside.

James hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately either, jerking awake at the slightest sound, his fight-or-flight response going into overdrive. Or he sleeps right on through his alarm because he hasn’t been getting enough sleep and he’s late to the trainer’s or the gym and he’s already so behind he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to catch up.

That isn’t even taking into account the guilt he feels at leaving Jess and the twins at the hospital to get on with the rest of his life, while they’re stuck in stasis. Jess will spend a few more weeks at the hospital before she’s sent home too, but he knows she doesn’t want to go anywhere her babies aren’t. James saw how much it tore her up inside that first day, when the two of them watched over the babies in their incubators, connected to all kinds of tubes and wiring and machines and monitors. 

James knows the longer Jess is away, the more likely he is to stray from God’s righteous path. Jess has always been the more devout between the two of them, her gentle hand guiding James toward salvation and keeping him from straying. Without her by his side, he knows he’s at risk. Perhaps it’s selfish of him to rely on Jess to keep him on the straight and narrow path. It’s lazy and irresponsible, too, and he’s putting too much on Jess and not enough on himself. 

That doesn’t make it any less true, though. 

He can already see the cracks and fissures that have opened up since he’s been on his own. He and Jess had read scripture together every morning and prayed together every night since they first started dating. James hasn’t picked up his bible once since he’s been home from the hospital. He supposes he could call her up and they could read to each other over the phone, but she has more important things to be worrying about right now.

Jess comes back from the hospital a few weeks later, looking haggard and tired and haunted. James wishes he could do more for her, to sooth and comfort her. When he reaches out and tries to touch her, though, she flinches and pulls away. Trying to get her to eat is like pulling teeth, same with bathing and brushing her teeth. When she’s not sleeping—sometimes ten hours a day or more—she’s watching TV with a glazed-over look in her once bright, lively eyes. 

He thinks she might be depressed, but when he brings it up she just waves him off dismissively.

“I can’t be depressed, James,” she’d said when he brought it up, pasting a too-big, too-bright smile on her face. She’d looked down at the tops of the twins’ heads, her smile dimming just the slightest bit. “I got these two little angels. What do I have to be unhappy about?”

James had leaned in and brushed her blond hair aside, pressed a soft kiss against her neck, behind her jawline. Jess had shivered and squirmed away from him, reaching up to rub at her neck. Then the twins had begun squalling and Jess turned her full attention back to them.

*** 

They finally have some time to themselves. Jess’s Momma came in from Kentucky to babysit, and James and Jess had rented a room at a nearby hotel. 

They haven’t had a moment to themselves in months and James has to admit he’s been looking forward to it. Jess has hardly let him see her naked since the babies were born, self-conscious about her stretch marks and the C-section scar and the puckered, flabby skin around it. Sometimes, James catches glimpses of her pale skin when she rubs cocoa butter on the scar before bed.

Jess is readying herself for bed when James emerges from the bathroom, in a cloud of shower steam, a towel slung around his hips. Jess looks up when joins her in the room and quickly throws a discarded robe over her shoulders, cinching a sash around her waist.

“Hey,” James says, sinking onto the bed beside her. He reaches out and tugs playfully on the end of the sash.

Jess bats his hand away. “Should I call to see how the boys’re doin’? Or would that be too helicopter parent-y?” she asks. 

“If it’d make you feel better, you should call her,” James says, leaning in and pushing the robe off her shoulder to kiss her collar bone lightly.

Jess shies away from him. “Stop it, Jimmy.”

“What? Why?” James asks, but he pulls away from her. 

“Because,” she says. “I ain’t ready for any of that.”

“Any of what, Jess? A man can’t shower love and affection on his wife and the mother of his children?” James asks, frowning at her.

Jess tugs the robe even tighter around her. “You know I ain’t happy with how I look,” she says.

“You look fine,” James protests.

Jess scowls at him. “Just leave it, Jimmy.”

“Jess,” he tries again, but she shuts him up with a steely glare, her blue eyes hardening into sharp-edged diamonds.

“We can do what we did before we were married,” she says, settling on the bed and smoothing her hands over her robe-covered lap. She picks up a pillow and uses it as a dividing line to separate her side of the bed from James’s. 

James can’t help but laugh incredulously. “Really? We’re not kids anymore, Jess,” he protests, sitting next to her. 

“You never seemed to mind it before,” Jess points out, crossing her arms over her chest. “I wasn’t ready for anything more than a little hand-holding and kissing back then, and you were just fine with that.”

James rubs his hands over his face and sighs. He knows pushing her on the subject won’t do any good, and it’ll probably just get her to dig her heels in even more because she’s stubborn like that. 

So James takes Jess’s hand in his and they sit in bed like that, hands clasped, with the pillow between them. James feels like he’s eighteen again, desperate and horny just for a glimpse of Jess’s ankle or a flash of the curve of her breast. 

He wishes he could convince her that he still finds her attractive, that he doesn’t mind the scars or the weight she’s still carrying around her waist, but he doesn’t suppose it would do any good. If Jess doesn’t want to hear it, it won’t matter, he can tell her he loves her and she’s still appealing to him until the cows come home. 

He has to be patient with her. Supportive and loving. He has to be her pillar of strength right now. It _is_ his job, after all, isn’t it? To pick her up and carry her when she falters?

After a little while, James starts to doze off and he lets his head drop onto Jess’s shoulder. He hardly notices her shrugging him away and letting his head fall back on one of his pillows. 

*** 

James doesn’t really think much more about it until he sees Jess with her high school yearbook spread open in her lap a few weeks after they start sleeping in separate beds, with Jess in the master bedroom and James down the hall in the guest room. He walks in from doing yardwork to find Jess flipping through glossy pages as she idly chews on the end of a strand of limp blond hair. 

She stops turning pages after a little while and he steps up behind her to see what she’s looking at.

It’s an image of herself from homecoming and she’d been crowned the queen of the dance, of course. She had her hair—dark brown back in those days—pulled back in a French twist, and her tiara dangled from her wrist, probably to keep from ruining her hair. The dress was pale pink meringue and hung off her scrawny frame like she was a department store mannequin.

James clears his throat lightly. “What’re you lookin’ at, hon?” he asks, walking around to join her on the couch.

Jess closes the yearbook and tucks her hair behind her ears. “Found my old yearbook while I was cleaning out one of the closets,” she says, clasping her hands loosely in her lap.

When James goes to cover her hands with his own, she pulls back. 

“Jess,” he starts, but she closes down again like a clam the moment her name slips from his lips, her eyes shuttering, her expression unreadable. “Please talk to me.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to talk about,” Jess says, her tone lifeless and dull. She pushes herself to her feet. “I’m gonna make you some dinner. What’re you in the mood for?”

“I want to talk,” James says, getting up after her. 

“I said there ain’t nothin’ to talk about,” Jess snaps, jerking her arm away when he brushes his thumb across the back of her wrist.

“We could talk about you,” James says, reaching for her hand. He grabs onto her before she can pull away and he squeezes her hand firmly. 

Jess tries to jerk her hand away but just gives up when it becomes evident James won’t let her go. She drops her shoulders and tilts her head, looking up into his eyes. “All right,” she says. “Go on, then. Talk.”

This isn’t how James was expecting things to go. He’d been hoping for something a little more mutual. A little more back-and-forth.

“Hon,” he starts, then stops, searching for words. “Where’ve you gone?”

“I’m right here, James,” Jess says, sighing, the exasperation straining her tone past its breaking point.

“No, you’re not,” James says, keeping his tone gentle. “You’ve gone somewhere and you won’t let me come after you.”

Jess twists her hand out of his and pushes him in the chest until there’s some space for her to slide past him. “You want steak? I got some steaks I thawed in the fridge,” she calls out as she pads, barefoot, into the kitchen.

James turns and looks after her. Jess turns from him, light from the refrigerator spilling across her face, suddenly so unfamiliar and foreign to him, he feels like he’s seeing her for the first time. Half in shadow, Jess pokes around in the fridge until she comes up with a package of thawed steaks and drops them on the counter.

James goes after her and leans in the doorway, against the frame, as Jess prepares dinner. 

He watches her small, callused hands—cuticles frayed and raw—peeling onions over the sink, then lets his eyes trail to her fragile wrist and up her arm, until it disappears into the sleeve of her shapeless gray T-shirt. 

He wishes he could show her what he sees: a strong, beautiful, capable woman. A mother. The woman he loves. The woman he’ll be buried beside, some day.

James slips in behind her and covers her hands with his own. Jess drops the onion in the sink with a thump and he feels her damp hand sliding over his arm. 

“James,” she says.

James leans in and presses a soft kiss against her neck. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tightly, chest to back. 

“It can wait,” he says, nuzzling gently behind her ear. 

He makes no move to take it further than that. He just wants Jess to let him hold her.

She goes stock-still and he wonders if this is the split second before she pushes him away again. 

Jess reaches down and pulls his arm tighter around her waist. 

“I love you, Jimmy,” she says, her voice trembling slightly.

“I love you too,” he says.

He feels Jess breathe in, deeply, and then let it all out in one long exhale. 

“I’m…” She pauses, falling off, the unfinished sentence left dangling.

James waits. He’ll wait for her forever, if he has to. As long as she knows he’s not going anywhere. No matter how fiercely she tries to push him away.

Finally, Jess clears her throat lightly.

“I ain’t good about any of this,” she says, and it sounds like an apology. “Sharin’ feelings and whatnot. It ain’t what we did growin’ up. We dealt with things on our own.”

“I know,” James says.

“I’m tryin’ to get better at it,” she says.

“You are,” James says.

Jess squeezes her fingers around his thumb. “So, I guess what I’m tryin’ to say here is—is thanks for not lettin’ me push you away.”

“You could never push me away.” James kisses her shoulder through the thin cotton of her threadbare T-shirt. 

Jess rubs her thumb over his knuckles. After a few minutes, she says, “Dinner ain’t gonna make itself, Jimmy.” 

James lets go and takes Jess gently by the shoulders, turning her until he can look her in the eyes. She looks up at him and manages a small smile.

“I won’t stop tryin’,” she adds. 

“I know. Neither will I. We’re a team.” James kisses her on the forehead.

Jess’s arms wind around his waist and he feels her fingers curling in the back of his shirt. “I know we are.”

They stay like that, wrapped up in each other, until the baby monitors crackle as the twins start crying for milk. Jess pulls away and tugs almost self-consciously at her shirt, embarrassed by the wet spots on the front of her T-shirt. 

While Jess is feeding the twins in the nursery, James gets out the rest of the ingredients and finishes preparing dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. **If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.**


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